Do you have a moment when you are stirring your coffee and it suddenly dawns to you that you do not recall having made it?
Or when you are halfway into a commute and you have no memory of the first ten minutes?
It happens more often than we would want it to. Weeks turn into days, and somehow in the process, we become passengers in our own lives.
Here at Treasure Behavioral Health, we encounter this behavior frequently, some people that are technically going through life but experiencing life like they are watching it on the sidelines.
Hidden Reality of Our Distracted Lives
The research tells a story we might not want to hear. Nearly half our waking hours—47% to be exact—are spent in this drifting state.
That adds up to more than a decade of our lives spent mentally elsewhere while our bodies go through familiar motions.
When we do this, we are experiencing a silent disconnection. We are physically here and mentally elsewhere, and the tension this causes is something subtle but nagging.
It is difficult to define but impossible to ignore.
The Mental Health Effects
This isn’t just about missing a moment here and there.
The initial process of the mind wandering gradually defines the way we spend our days.
The quiet costs start to add up:
- A muted emotional range: The small joys and satisfactions get filtered out along with everything else
- Losing track of ourselves: Our own thoughts and feelings become background noise
- Feeling like life is happening to us: Rather than being active participants in our days
- A restless undercurrent: The mind-body disconnect feeds a subtle anxiety we can’t quite name
- Relationships on the surface: When we’re not fully here, neither are our connections
Why We Slip into Autopilot
But here is the thing: our brains are literally programmed to do this.
Autopilot can save us a lot of energy, as it deals with foreseeable things with very little active participation.
It is efficient; it is even protective.
However, in our world dominated by routines, this helpful mechanism can be in overdrive mode.
We tend to drift when:
- Daily life becomes too familiar and predictable
- We’re running on empty, mentally or emotionally
- There are feelings or situations we’d rather not face
- We’re constantly stimulated and never really rest
Stepping Out of Autopilot
The shift back to presence doesn’t need any drastic changes.
The smallest adjustments wake us up to what we’ve been missing.
Try these gentle practices:
- Anchor yourself in small moments: Notice the heat of your tea and the steam that comes off it, the way your mug is heavy in your hands
- Follow your senses: What do you really hear when you go out? How does the air touch your skin?
- Introduce tiny disruptions: Take a different route, sit in a different chair
- Create soft reminders: Set a gentle phone chime or place a small object somewhere you’ll notice it as a cue to pause
The return to presence:
- Begin with kindness: Observe that you have been letting yourself be carried away without judging yourself
- Celebrate your wins: Each time you self-recognize and come back to the moment is a win
- As you do it, be patient: Presence is a practice, not a destination
- Know that some autopilot is normal: You’re not trying to be conscious of everything, just more conscious of some things
Finding Your Way Back to Presence
Return to the present does not imply perfection or remaining alert all the time. It is more like getting used to giving yourself a check-in during the day.
You will be there at some moments, absent at others, and that is very human.
What matters is the gentle return.
Whenever you catch yourself drifting off mentally and ever so gently come back to whatever it is you are doing, you’re strengthening something important.
You’re choosing to show up for your own life, even in the most ordinary moments.
The goal is just to find a more conscious balance in how we move through our days.
To Conclude
We can wander because it is uncomfortable to actually be in the moment, which means facing what we do not necessarily want to feel.
But when we do show up, even for the mundane moments, we discover that they’re not so mundane after all.
Just notice when you’re here and when you’re not. The rest tends to follow naturally.
Feeling like you’re living your days but not really experiencing them?
We know how it feels to become detached from your life at Treasure Behavioral Health.
We approach you in a caring way to guide you on finding your way back to presence and discovering once again what it is like to be at home in your own life.
Sometimes we need someone to help us remember how to be here.
Visit treasurebehavioralhealth.com to learn more about how we can help.
FAQs
How much of our lives do we spend on autopilot?
Research shows that we spend 47% of our waking hours in a state of distraction.
What is an autopilot mental state?
Mental autopilot refers to doing something or an activity without thinking about it or being conscious of your actions or activity, in other words, your mind is elsewhere.
It is as though your body is here yet your mind is elsewhere.
Is living on autopilot bad?
Some autopilot behavior is actually normal and healthy, as it allows our brains to conserve energy but spending too much time on autopilot causes disconnection and even depression.
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